Interview with David Boadella: February, 2005 Esther Frankel, M.A

the usa body psychotherapy journal The Official Publication of THE UNITED STATES ASSOCIATION FOR Volume 5 Number 1 2006 BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY www.usabp.org 1 USABPJ Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006 Table of Contents Editorial Jacqueline A. Carleton, Ph.D. 4 Energy & Character David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. 5 Guest Editorial Milton Corrêa, M.Sc., Ph.D. and Esther Frankel, M.A. 6 Interview with David Boadella: February, 2005 Esther Frankel, M.A. 7 Basic Concepts in Biosynthesis David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. & Silvia Specht Boadella, Ph.D. 18 Organ Systems and Lifestyles David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. 21 Shape Postures and Postures of the Soul: The Biosynthesis Concept of Motoric Fields David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. 32 The Historical Development of the Concept of Motoric Fields David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. 38 Embodied Intentionality Milton Corrêa, M.Sc., Ph.D. and Esther Frankel, M.A. 42 The Tree of Man: Fundamental Dimensions of Biosynthesis David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. 48 Depth-Psychological Roots of Biosynthesis David Boadella, D.Sc.hon, M.Ed., B.A. & Silvia Specht Boadella, Ph.D. 53 ©2005 USABP USABP Mission Statement The USABP believes that integration of the body and mind is essential to effective psychotherapy, and to that end, its mission is to develop and advance the art, science, and practice of body psychotherapy in a professional, ethical, and caring manner in order to promote the health and welfare of humanity. (revised October 1999). www.usabp.org 2 USABPJ Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006 USA BODY PSYCHOTHERAPY JOURNAL VOLUME. 5, Number. 1, 2006 A Tribute to David Boadella and Energy & Character Silvia Specht Boadella David Boadella www.usabp.org 3 USABPJ Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006 Interview with David Boadella: February, 2005 Esther Frankel, M.A. Abstract Esther Frankel interviews for the first time David Boadella in February 2005, from the foundations of his life, groundings from age 35 till 50, his expansions from age 50 to 65 and the consolidations of his personal and professional life from age 65 till today. Keyword David Boadella Esther: Tell me about your early background, David, and how you came to be interested in psychotherapy David: I was born in London, but grew up in Kent. To the north lay the suburbs of London, to the south was open countryside. I grew up very close to trees, and had great joy in climbing them. My parents were connected to a spiritual teacher (an open-minded person who taught the root principles of the world’s major spiritual traditions). Both my father and mother were looking for what lay beneath the surface of life. I was a rebellious teenager, nevertheless. One of the key moments in my development was discovering the works of Wilhelm Reich, at the age of 21, in an anarchist bookshop in London. My parents lived to be very old. My mother was an optimistic person: she loved painting and was very artistic. She died in full awareness when she was 96. Her last message was: I have no regrets about the past, and no fear of the future. As for the present, I still have my grip on life. She was very bright to the end. From my father I learned respect for the roots of knowledge in a wide variety of cultures. He hid his unorthodox soul behind an orthodox exterior. At school my first interest was literature. This was my main subject at the University of London. My first book, written when I was 25 was called “The Spiral Flame” and was a comparison between the work of the English poet and novelist, D.H. Lawrence, and the work of Reich. I sent a copy to Tage Philipson, the Danish doctor who was Reich’s first client in vegeto-therapy: I met him later in Paris, and he was very fond of the comparison between Lawrence and Reich. After discovering the books of Reich, I looked for a therapist. I wrote to Reich who told me the nearest Reichian therapist was in Oslo, Ola Raknes. I could not travel to Norway then, but I found a psychiatrist in London who had been trained by Od Havrevold, another Norwegian Reichian. Unfortunately her work was very mechanical: she used nitrous oxide from a gas-and-air machine to induce streamings in her clients. If they got into negative transference, they blamed the machine. I stopped this work after a few months. Later I discovered a very creative man in Nottingham, Paul Ritter, who was passionate about Reich, and practiced a very humane and sensitive form of intuitive vegeto-therapy. Reich wrote him a letter of support. He became my first real therapist. Later Ola Raknes came to London regularly, and I could take a series of intensive sessions from him. Esther: What was it like to work with Raknes as a therapist? David: Raknes was over 80 at this time, he had extraordinary energy. He was a very grounded kind of man and he worked not so much with words, but more with touch, with melting points of the armour and mobilizing energy. He practised classical vegeto-therapy as he had learned this from Reich. He was in his mid- eighties, and I was at that time 39. He liked to do a process to help the client to relax – he wanted the client to be completely stiff. So I would be lying down and he would say “make yourself completely stiff like a board”, and then he’d take my neck and lift me to standing, ,which needs a lot of strength, then lower me down again, and then he said “now relax”. It was a paradoxical intervention: stiffening in order to relax. Raknes was a respectful, non-invasive therapist, who paid great attention to body signals. Once he had a client who said “Doctor, I feel like a corpse”. He looked at his client and saw one toe was moving. So he said “I never saw a corpse move its toe”. Then the toe moved the foot, the foot moved the leg, one leg activated the other, and the man changed his job a few weeks later. Esther: At that time Reich was still living? www.usabp.org 7 USABPJ Vol. 5, No. 1, 2006 Interview Frankel David: Reich was still alive, living in US and I had one letter from him recommending Ola Raknes. I also wrote, in 1952 as a young student, a letter to Nic Waal (who was a doctor trained by Reich in Oslo) asking her who is now available to do vegeto-therapy. I received a 4 page letter back from her. giving me the whole history of vegeto- therapy in Oslo and telling me some very important things. She said that unless we do a contained building-up of the ego, we can create psychosis in our clients. So I was getting a message from a leading vegeto-therapist (she was the director of an Institute of Psychiatry in Oslo), which was giving me, as a young stu-dent who was just beginning, the very clear message that containment is needed if you are going to work with strong energies and strong emotional expression. This message I never forgot. Esther: What did you do when you finished your university studies in London? David: When I finished my studies I moved to Nottingham to take my therapy with Paul Ritter. I decided at that time to become a teacher and work with children because I was interested in emotional issues of children because of my Reichian interests in the prevention of neurosis. I later took a Master’s degree in Education. I got my first job teaching children parallel to taking my therapy from Paul Ritter. In 1957, after 5 years with Paul Ritter, and studying orgonomy at his research institute, I took my first client parallel to my teaching. So I now had one client and when his therapy was finished one year later, I wrote up the case. It was called “The Treatment of a Compulsive Character”. After writing it I heard about Alexander Lowen and I wrote to him and sent him this case study. He wrote back and gave me encouraging and supportive feedback. Esther: How did your work in education relate to your work as a therapist? David: I was working with maladjusted children, aged between 7 and 11. My Master’s thesis at the University of Nottingham applied the early attachment theory of John Bowlby, and Donald Stott, to the motoric behaviour of children. I worked with their signals and signs of emotional experience. By “signs” Bowlby and Stott meant what is shown in facial expression, body gesture. So I wrote twenty case studies, in my thesis, of children I was teaching, in which I dealt with their emotional issues, and with how they signalled these in non verbal language and how they could be helped by the kind of therapeutic interventions I mention below in the normal teaching context. All this was described in my Master’s thesis published in 1960. For example: if a child is repressing aggression, how can you help him? So I created a situation, in a pause, or in physical education time, and I said – here is a mattress. How much dust can you take from this mattress? This was a neutral way of helping to re-channel aggression non-destructively. I didn’t say let yourself be angry. I just said: create some more dust.

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